Flow in landscape photography

Flow in landscape photographs gives the opportunity to create a sense of 3-dimensionality to the 2-D plane of a photograph and to invite a journey into the depths of a scene.

I offer some ideas to consider within compositions:

Diagonals

S-curves

The s-curve was a popular element in Rococo fine art painting, much admired for its serpentine grace and flow.

Mountain Landscape with Shepherd (1783)

Thomas Gainsborough

S-curves can occur naturally as in the case of a meandering river; the swerving ridge of a sand dune; the clifftop edge of a plateau.

In the case of the image below, this S-curve is partly natural (the first arc), then implied by compositional elements of prominent sunlit rounded lumps in the middle distance of the reef & the conjuction of the Thurlestone and the smaller pointed rock as an end point of the S-curve’s path.

.

The one below needs a bit more imagination, but I felt that I could see a reverse S-curve in it.

Have a look at what lies before you from the grand vistas to the intimate 'inner landscapes' and see if you can find flowing connections between various elements. Sometime a combination of these ideas above (along with C-curves) can be present within an appealing scene.